Duncan's Passage
by rolleightdown
Summary: Duncan Idaho in his multiple ghola incarnations has always been, to me at least, the most human of Frank Herbert's characters. This story is his thoughts upon leaving his beloved Murbella for the unknowns of the universe. Multiple flashbacks.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I am not the owner of the Dune franchise, nor am I Frank Herbert nor any of his relatives. Skaters have no money for literary rights (a cookie for the first person who can tell me where I paraphrased that from). And now for the show...

_My memories rise up from the murky morass that is_

_the totality of our ancestors' experiences. Moments_

_caught in our cellular awareness like flies in amber_

_comprise our past. At any time, a single moment rises_

_to the fore. Suddenly, hate! Or love! Or fear! Yet,_

_it is only our past. As much as each memory holds bits_

_of the present, it is only a print of the past. How much_

_I yearn for you to _feel_ in the present. But, that, too,_

_will fade into our pasts.  
_

**-Leto II, His voice, Dar-es-Balat**


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: _I am not Frank Herbert. I am making no profit from this, nor do I ever expect to. Skaters have no money for literary rights.

It was at the crisp, cold end of autumn that the boy, Duncan, found himself racing under the fiery colors comprising the oaks, elms, and maples of the Geidi Prime lowlands. His breath came short in his chest as he passed the occasional pine or spruce, lone verdant sentries against the onrushing winter. Stinging sweat poured into the thirteen year old's cave-sitter eyes in defiance of the chilly air, a result of his mad exertion.

Only short days before, soldiers of the House Harkonnen had come and taken the young boy from the Idaho household, killing the youth's father and taking his mother for enslavement in the pleasure-houses. Duncan had been "lucky"; he had been taken to the game preserves.

He reflected bitterly upon his fate under the Harkonnens, _"Game" preserves. What a name to put onto murder. Harkonnen bastards, damn you all to the nether pits of Hell! I _will_ kill as many of you as I can. For my mother, my father, and all of the rest of the people whose lives you have destroyed, I _will_ have my vengeance._

Not wasting the breath to voice the curse, the youth continued his loping stride under the falling canopy. The indigo sky overhead was beginning to darken, marking the swift fall of night as the boy searched for good cover, any cover at all from the sensors that the hunters would be using to follow him. He knew, as surely as he knew the gasping-to-come that was beginning to scream in his chest, that to be found out in the open once night had fallen would be his death. All the same, he knew that he was doomed unless he could find shelter from the cold this night. For, even in the lowlands, Geidi Prime was a cold world, a harsh world.

As the ground ahead became rockier and the forest thinned considerably, the boy began to worry that perhaps he would not be able to find better shelter than what he had already passed and deemed too thin. His eyes searched the tortured ground for a hiding place, just as the knife-like rocks underneath began to turn his unshod feet the colors of autumn. His sharp senses revealed what appeared to be naught but a small depression off of the main path as a deep cavern, someplace that the hunters would have to enter single-file in their bulky, heated armor. Perhaps they could track him there, but they would be vulnerable to him as they entered.

Duncan patted the small knife that he had managed to keep hidden from all searchers for the long days and cold nights of his imprisonment. The short blade was not much, but at least it would give the youth a chance to sell his life as dearly as possible when the hunters came. He crawled into the cavern, finding that it swelled outward once past the small entrance as far as his senses could reach in the failing light. The granite and basalt of the large area was jagged and harsh against the boy's unprotected skin as he rested, gathering his strength.

Only then did he reflect upon the fate of the other four adolescents that had been "released" by the hunters only to be tracked and killed, one by one. He had not known these other youths, barely more than children, but they had shared a common bond in the hatred of the Harkonnen animals that had kept them imprisoned and starved as they awaited their fates. One by one, Duncan had heard a high-pitched scream in the distance, followed by the laughter of the soldiers and then silence as they moved on to the next youth. Thrice had he heard this, and it seemed a cruelty to him that they were saving him for last. Only because he had earned the soldiers enmity through being tough enough to not cry out during the constant beatings were they saving him for the final hunt this night.

He looked out of the small entrance to the cave, seeing that the cold sky overhead had already matched the foliage and was beginning to darken towards deepest navy. He watched and waited, his breath finally slowing and the cold finally wicking the sweat from his brow. In the distance, over the chill air, the sound that he had been dreading floated to him. A scream, followed by laughter and then silence.

_You will pay for them as well,_ he thought to himself. _You will pay for all those whose lives you have taken. All those who have never been able to stand up to you. All those who have never had a chance to fight back. All those who died to give you pleasure, or profit, or sport. You will pay._

As the sky continued to darken overhead, the youth readied himself, falling back into the little training that his father, a rebel against the Harkonnen machine, had given him. His breathing came in deep, even tides. His muscles relaxed as much as he could get them to, stretching in the confined space. He tested the footing of the razor edges underneath his feet, ignoring the pain of the shreds of skin hanging from them. _Let them come,_ he thought.

Finally, the skywas fading to jet as the first man made his difficult way through the narrow passage. The knife flashed downward into the weak point at the neck seam, spurting carmine all over the youth. The man's last view of this world was one of shock, seeing the small boy standing there with a tiny knife, spitting athim. Then, his world went as dark as the night sky itself…

Duncan came back out of his reverie. Sitting in a chair at his console in the no-ship, he wondered to himself, _Why do I think of my first kill? Why does that memory from my first life intrude right now?_ He knew thatit would haunt him until he could better understand the questions necessary to frame the problem.


	3. Chapter 3

"_Whispers of wind_

_They carry the sand_

_Of times once past_

_That are again…"_

**-Ancient Fremen Traveling Song**


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: I am not Frank Herbert. I am making no money from this. Please don't sue me._

Duncan came back to himself at his small terminal. His quarters, Spartan and militarily neat, were almost alien to him. It was not that he did not recognize his bed, his small holograph of Murbella. Instead, it almost seemed that the furnishings rejected him, as if he did not belong in that place.

The feeling of unnaturalness washed over him followed by an inexplicable feeling of sadness. While he often regretted leaving Murbella behind, it was not this that bothered him. Somehow, he had lost something in his reverie. Something important.

A knock came at the bulkhead next to the open hatch; Miles Teg entered. Duncan watched the small frame of the youth as he moved over to the bed and sat down, noting the subtleties of stance and movement that carried Teg's aura of command. An aura that was well deserved, despite this body's short time in the universe. Noting the slight hesitations in Teg's manner, Duncan said, "I've disabled the comeyes. What did Sheanna think of your proposal?"

Shaking his head in wry amusement, Teg replied, "She said I was crazy. She said you were crazy, too. However, she thinks that it is a good idea on the whole. She'll support us with the rest of the Reverend Mothers."

Duncan nodded in affirmation, "That will help immensely. After all, I don't think that they'll ever _really_ trust us; we're the wild card. Too afraid of another Paul, obviously."

"I don't think that it was him, but rather his son the Tyrant that they're really worried about dealing with again," replied Teg. "After all, while you know him best, they all have memories from that time and don't like most of them."

A pensive look settled its way onto Duncan's craggy features for a moment. He dismissed it with a shake of his head and then replied, "They don't have enough data to do anything drastic; _that_, at least, was one of Leto's lessons. Although, if anyone never really needed the lesson, it would be the Bene Gesserit."

Miles actually chuckled at that before replying, "'Always slowly, always carefully' seems to be their motto these days. I suppose that it comes with the territory, though. After all, pragmatism seems to be the byword in these latter days.

Abruptly shifting direction, Miles asked, "What was he like in your day, the Tyrant?"

"He was," here Duncan paused for a long moment to let his Mentat intellect roam back along the corridors of memory, "he was the most complex being that has ever lived."

"You understand, a little bit, of what it is like to have more memories than you were born with. I understand it a little better. However, we both came upon these after we already had a personality formed from our own experiences. He did not; I think that he was a community of people, able to react out of any of their personalities. Thinking of Leto as a single person is just as silly as thinking of the Sisterhood as a single entity. They are both a multitude-perhaps a multitude with a singular goal-but still a multitude. Each is capable of literally _anything_," Duncan continued.

"And that, I think-" Duncan broke off as the entire room _heaved_ up and to port.

Teg exclaimed, "What in the nether hells?!"

Duncan swung to his terminal, fingers already calling up a status report…


	5. Chapter 5

"_Words, words, words._

_Always, it is words with you._

_Masking your actions behind a veil of,_

'_This is what happened. We can explain_

_it now. There is no mystery here.'_

_Why have you never learned from_

_the Tyrant's example?"_

**-Mother Superior Darwi Ordrade, memoirs.**


	6. Chapter 6

Duncan's fingers flew furiously in the control fields of his terminal. The small display shimmered into existance, detailing a series of red failure codes in a representation of the mammoth no-ship. He wasted no time on cursing; the no-field generator was down. Without it, the ship would be visible to any sensor trained towards them.

Teg grasped it immediately, as well. He said, "The bridge is closer."

Duncan nodded, "Go."

With that short exchange, Teg was just _gone_. A blur of motion and a draft were the only evidence of his passage as Duncan levered himself out of his slingchair and sprinted for the bridge. Teg had shown enough of his overdrive talent several years before for Duncan to figure the rest out. Thus, the terse conversation; when two Mentats come to the same conclusion, there is often little need for dialogue.

By the same token, there _was _great need for the pair to work in concert. Duncan raced down the hallway, his well-trained motions making little sound even at full speed. His black hair, allowed to grow long during his years of exile, streamed behind him in the wake of his passage. His mind was unfocused, gathering data from his surroundings as he worked towards the important questions: Who had cut the generator? And why? His ears noted the difference in air pressure as he came upon an open door, but it did not consciously register until he had to detail around the slender form of Sheanna as she shot out of her quarters.

"No-field generator," she stated.

"I know," he responded. "Teg's on it."

While the younger Atreides scion might not quite understand the workings of the vessel as well as Duncan himself--having been both a Mentat and a prisoner of it so long, he was something of an expert--she most certainly was experienced and had the vast resources of her Other Memory to draw upon. Therefore, Duncan did not resent her actions as she trailed him towards the bridge. The pair vaulted up the ladders, reaching the bridge in less than thirty seconds after the sudden shut-down of the field.

Sheanna broke off towards the helm station as Duncan went to the engineering console, by unspoken agreement. The training of the Bene Gesserit emphasized observation, so Sheanna was able to take in the entire situation in one flickering gestalt. She thrust her hands into the control fields and her fingers flickered as they fed commands to the Holtzmann generators. She announced, "Ten seconds to foldspace."

Duncan, engaged in his examination of the engineering readouts, followed the obvious trail through the software to the fault that had caused the generator to shut down. His Mentat intellect saw the algorithms that dictated power flow and distribution throughout the vessel and saw how the programming had been looped back on itself. He did not allow himself the luxury of fear; if he paused in the slightest, they were all dead. His fingers flew through a series of corrections, deleting whole sections of the power file and overriding the helm commands at the same time. It was quick and dirty--there was no time for elegance in his programming--so the lights dimmed and nearly everything but basic life support shut down.

Sheanna spun on him, her face querrelous and tight with suppressed emotion. She demanded, "What are you doing?" Her tone, stopping just short of Voice, was cold and commanding.

"Saving us," was his terse reply as he continued on to code an entirely new set of commands into the power systems. He did so with blinding speed, cutting through entire sections of code with the programmer's equivalent of an axe and splicing them back together with the equivalent of spit and bailing wire. After nearly three-quarters of a minute, he flicked his fingers through one more set of commands, glanced at the readouts, and pulled up the com system. 

He said one word, "Now."

The power began to come back up and the readout on the no-field generator went from its "off-line" display to a more normal "active" one.

Duncan continued, "Thank you. I appreciate the help."

Teg, at the other end, replied with obvious relief, "Quick thinking. I didn't have the command access down here to do anything about it, and I didn't even see the trap until you'd already fixed it."

Sheanna, discomfited as a Reverend Mother rarely was, paid Duncan the compliment of dropping her masks to let him see her true anger. She continued in a frozen, remote tone, "Would you _please_ explain what just happened? I assume we're out of danger, so you now have time."

Duncan sighed, his body letting go of the last of his adrenalin response, and sagged back into the chair by the engineering console. He thought for a moment and then replied, "It will take time. I'll be able to show you more easily in my quarters."

Sheanna began to protest, but then saw the fear hidden under the fatigue in his features. He saw this in her and his body language altered slightly to one of approval. She knew the comeyes would see it, and that her behavior would be analyzed. So, she slid over into a mask that she hoped her sisters would interpret as one of deception and disbelief of the ghola and replied, "If you insist. I would like as much information as possible."

The pair slipped out of the bridge at a much slower pace than they had entered it. It was only then that Sheanna realized Duncan had left the com channel open. The question of why he would do that dominated her thoughts as they made their way towards his quarters...


	7. Chapter 7

_Ahh...deception.  
Self-deception is the easiest,  
mass deception the hardest.  
Be sure that your allies are just  
as entrapped as your enemies.  
Power, fear, and deception:  
the tools of a ruler..._

**--Baron Vladimir Harkonnen**


End file.
